List

The Next Establishment

Who will be the next generation’s Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett? The next Diane von Furstenberg or Rupert Murdoch? Whether they’re designing chic hotels, building media empires, creating dynamic social networks, or finding alternative energy sources, the 55 people listed here prove that you’re never too young (or old) to work your way onto the New Establishment.Plus: The lifetime Hall of Fame, the Go-to Gang, the Pit Stop, and the Bottomed Line.

The longtime Eagles manager is poised to become the most powerful person in the music business if a proposed merger between his Ticketmaster service and concert promoter Live Nation goes through. The anointment would give Azoff enough redemption to merit his own VH1 Behind the Music episode: nearly 20 years after leaving the top echelons of the music business (where he was widely credited with turning around MCA Records), the feisty 61-year-old is back on top.
Christopher Bailey&dagger;

The power couple are making names for themselves in two worlds: Bendet in fashion, Eisner in film. In the spring, Bendet’s fashion line Alice & Olivia released a spin-off collection called 9T, which features tees and tanks at more recession-friendly prices (proving the 32-year-old hasn’t forgotten what she learned at Wharton). She’s also looking to strengthen her company’s foothold on the popular leggings market. Meanwhile, Eisner, son of former Disney chief Michael Eisner, attracted buzz in March when he was chosen to option Craig Glazer’s memoir The King of Sting for the big screen. Through his company L&E productions, Eisner, 36, is developing a biopic on Grateful Dead lead singer Jerry Garcia and Havana Nocturne, a story of Cuban gangsters set in the 1950s.
Tory Burch&dagger;

Dillon, 38, and his South San Francisco–based company, Solazyme, entered into a deal last year with Chevron in which the oil giant will help Solazyme increase its production of algae fuels, lower their price, and bring them to market. Dillon has said the company could be producing algae-derived biodiesel at a cost of just $2 to $3 per gallon as soon as 2011. It’s even created a viable jet fuel from the green goo.
Jesse Dylan&dagger;

The eldest son of rock legend Bob, Jesse, well known in his own right for directing music videos, commercials, and movies (American Wedding, Kicking and Screaming), is now channeling his creative energies into publicizing ideas and products designed to change the world. The 43-year-old recently started FreeForm, a multi-media production company whose clients include Red, Bono’s nonprofit organization aimed at fighting aids in Africa, and he won an Emmy Award for his work on the popular “Yes We Can Song” video that he directed for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Lapo Elkann

It’s hard to think of anyone more deserving of the label “inventor” or of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” (which he received in 2007) than Griffith. The 35-year-old Aussie has invented, among other things, a desktop printer that can make lenses for low-cost prescription eyeglasses and a handheld, human-powered electricity generator. One of the six companies he has helped to found is Makani Power, which plans to use huge, kite-like turbines to capture wind energy at high altitudes, where the wind is much stronger—Google has invested $15 million. In his spare time, Griffith writes educational children’s comic books and a column for Make magazine.
Chris Hughes&dagger;

The female comedy screenwriting team—a rarity in Hollywood, even more so with the rise of Judd Apatow and his tight-knit group—is behind such hits as Legally Blonde and The House Bunny. Their debut screenplay, the acclaimed 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, is now a buzzed-about TV series on ABC Family. And they seem to be having the time of their lives, happily telling reporters of the hours spent writing pool-side, bottles of champagne not far from hand. On the movie front, their latest, The Ugly Truth, with Katherine Heigl, grossed more than $100 million worldwide (and cost $38 million to make), and Smith is an executive producer of Whip It, the Drew Barrymore–directed Ellen Page movie. McCullah Lutz’s Long Time Gone, starring Christina Ricci and Anjelica Huston, is due later this year.
Kate Mulleavy and Laura Mulleavy&dagger;

When Rupert Murdoch is your father, the bar to impress him is set awfully high, but these three (he’s got six children in all) seem to be handing the pressure well. Elisabeth, 41, is the founder of Shine, a British TV production company, and is said to be a candidate for the C.E.O. spot at ITV, Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster. James, 37, serves as chairman of BSkyB and News Corp.’s businesses in Europe and Asia. After Peter Chernin stepped down as his father’s right-hand man, many speculated James would take his spot. Alas, DirecTV C.E.O. Chase Carey got the job. But James is still believed to be heir apparent, despite finding himself embroiled in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal earlier this year. Lachlan, 38, meanwhile, continues to make deals through his investment house, Illyria.
Wendi Murdoch

Overseeing venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins’s iFund, a $100 million initiative devoted to investing in start-ups producing iPhone applications, Murphy is banking on the idea that the iPhone is at the epicenter of the tide moving toward fully mobile computing. He’s definitely on to something. Murphy, who has a background in tech-product development, scours iPhone’s App Store looking for programs he thinks could be the next big thing. His success stories? Top application providers like the group-texting provider GOGII, video-game-maker Ngmoco (which Nexter Neil Young runs), and remote home-monitoring network iControl.
Elon Musk

Musk, 38, has his fingers in a lot of very promising pies. In June his electric-car company, Tesla, received a (somewhat controversial) $465 million loan from the Department of Energy to develop a $50,000 sedan that seats seven people; Tesla is also working with Daimler on a battery-powered version of the Smart car. That same month, SolarCity, the solar-power provider of which Musk is the chairman, got a new round of funding, which will allow it to expand. And in July the space-transport business Musk founded, SpaceX, delivered its first satellite into orbit (on behalf of a Malaysian company).
Jay Penske&dagger;

Is he a dilettante or a jack-of-all-trades? Penske, son of automotive magnate Roger Penske, has founded businesses as diverse as an antiquarian bookstore (Dragon Books, in Bel Air), an IndyCar racing team, and a cell phone for kids. His primary concern, however, is Mail.com Media Corporation, which Penske, 30, founded in 2004 as an e-mail portal but has expanded to include a number of auto- and entertainment-related Web sites. This summer he raised eyebrows by paying a reported $10 to $15 million for Nikki Finke’s insider-y movie-business site, Deadline Hollywood Daily, and by hiring celebrity-magazine editor Bonnie Fuller for Hollywood Life, another entertainment property.
Zac Posen

The 28-year-old German-born architect is a partner at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the international architecture firm founded by acclaimed Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas. After collaborating with Koolhaas on the design for Prada’s multi-million-dollar stores in Los Angeles and New York, Scheeren proved he was ready to pull his weight. Now, as head of O.M.A.’s Beijing office, Scheeren is in charge of the firm’s most challenging project: the design and construction of the new headquarters for China’s largest state-controlled news broadcaster, China Central Television, and the adjacent Television Cultural Center.
Josh Schwartz

In 2003, Shah founded SunEdison, which quickly became the country’s leading solar-energy company, providing power to major entities such as Wal-Mart and California State University. The sheer success of his venture has made many consider him to be the father of modern solar power, and while SunEdison continues to grow, Shah, 35, resigned as chairman last year to work as a consultant. As C.E.O. of the Carbon War Room, he is able to travel and advise on energy matters around the globe.
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Sorkin, a business-reporting juggernaut at The New York Times, continues to build his one-man empire. Beyond his flagship mergers-and-acquisitions coverage, he also edits DealBook, his popular blog and e-mail newsletter. The youthful editor, who, at 32, is rumored to be the Times’s highest-paid reporter, saw his stake rise considerably this year as America (and New Yorkers, in particular) breathlessly followed his minute-by-minute coverage of the bailout and failures of Lehman Brothers, A.I.G., and Detroit’s Big Three. And with his insider knowledge and behind-the-scenes access, it’s no surprise that his upcoming fly-on-the-wall book covering the financial crisis, Too Big to Fail, due in bookstores this month, is hugely anticipated.
Scott Sternberg&dagger;

The former fashion model has emerged as a powerful force, both within her father’s company and beyond. Serving as the Trump Organization’s executive vice president of development and acquisitions, the 28-year-old is responsible for the continued expansion of her father’s hotels business. Additionally, she runs Ivanka Trump Collection, an extravagant line of diamond jewelry. Always the Donald’s daughter, she also finds time to appear as a judge on his reality-television program, Celebrity Apprentice. This month, in the ultimate merger and acquisition, she will marry real-estate scion and New York Observer owner Jared Kushner.
Alexander Wang

Honored with the 2009 C.F.D.A. Swarovski Award for Womenswear, Wang has proved that nothing can hinder true genius. After an internship at Teen Vogue and with just two years of study at Parsons School of Design under his belt, the whiz kid decided to leave school and get an early jump on his career. Since launching his eponymous clothing label in 2005, he continues to be regarded by fashion’s powers-that-be as an unmatched prodigy of the sartorial arts. This year, on the heels of collaborations with Keds and Uniqlo, the young designer established his own line of footwear as well as a new line of cotton essentials, called T by Alexander Wang. Now 25 years old, fashion’s most successful dropout since Anna Wintour has come a long way from pushing around clothing racks at Vogue’s youthful counterpart.
Casey Wasserman

In 1996, at age 23, Werbach became the youngest-ever president of the Sierra Club, but by 2004 he had become disillusioned by what he saw as traditional environmentalism’s paltry results, and he said so in a speech to some of the movement’s leaders. That caught the attention of Wal-Mart, which spent a year courting Werbach and eventually hired him as a sustainability consultant. Many former colleagues and friends have denounced Werbach as a traitor, but he feels he can accomplish more working with big companies than against them. To that end, his San Francisco–based consultancy, which was acquired by ad giant Saatchi & Saatchi last year, has also taken on Frito-Lay and Procter & Gamble as clients.
Neil Young&dagger;

Many thought the video-game developer was crazy when he left his longtime position running Electronic Arts’ Los Angeles studio, in June 2008, to start Ngmoco, a company devoted solely to producing video games for the iPhone. While iPhone and iPod Touch “apps” may have been a relatively unknown entity a year ago, they are now a bona fide cash cow, as users in droves are downloading games that are constantly being updated and available at a lower cost than traditional video games. The sheer number of iPhone and iPod Touch users (more than 50 million and steadily rising) and the growing percentage of those who are downloading applications (95 percent) suggest that Young made an incredibly shrewd move.
David Zaslav&dagger;

As the mastermind creator of C.S.I., Zuiker turned Americans’ appetite for gore into a $6 billion franchise. This fall he will attempt to revolutionize new media with Penguin’s release of Level 26, which Zuiker hopes will be the most visible example of a true diginovel. The graphic crime book will feature a world of tie-ins crossing mediums. The Web site will include video “cyberbridges” allowing readers to have the story fleshed out for them as they progress through it, as well as a vibrant online community. Showing he truly knows where the money is, Zuiker, 41, is also perfecting a Level 26 iPhone app, and he has mapped out a sophisticated plan for extensive product integration.